Books

January 04, 2013

My new book is in the
process of being written. It is called Why Women Rule: The Rise of the
Female Warrior.

Those of you inside the
wealth warrior movement will know why this book is being written. You may even start
to get an idea of whom the book is being written about. Our game-changing
webinar on Women and Prosperity with Carolyn Freyer-Jones started the idea.

You can listen to this
webinar even if you are not a member of the WW movement simply by emailing our
benevolent Director, the brilliant personal development scholar and book
publisher Maurice Bassett (find him at: reinventingyourself@gmail.com.)

If you are a woman you
will love this webinar and it will confirm your most optimistic hopes about
women and wealth. If you are a man, this webinar may wake you up a little bit
to what's happening all around you.

Doug writes: "Men
are creators and warriors in so many areas in life but it is an extraordinary man who lives from his heart and has
surrendered to the machismo archetype while still maintaining incredible power and intimacy."

Another clue is to be
found in the heart of Louisa May Alcott.

* * *

My daughter Stephanie gave me a quote in a
nice wooden frame as a Christmas present. She bought it while visiting the
home/museum of Louisa May Alcott in Boston this year. Alcott is most famous for
having written Little Women.

I told her I loved the
gift and the quote, and that I would be using it in the Wealth Warrior Movement
messages:

"Work is always my Salvation." ~ Louisa May Alcott

I love this quote
because it so honors and elevates work. In an age when I am constantly urged to
find balance and soft comfort and meditative states of peace and bliss it
heartens me to hear her bracing, courageous words.

Really, I do not want
balance in my life. I want what she has.

Stephanie then wrote
this to me:

You should look into
Louisa May Alcott's story. I believe she was a perfect example of a woman
warrior:

At age 15, troubled by the poverty that plagued her family, she
vowed: "I will do something by and by. Don’t care what, teach, sew,
act, write, anything to help the family; and I’ll be rich and famous and happy
before I die, see if I won’t!"

September 19, 2012

(Once, a few years ago,
I sent this quote to someone who was STUCK in passivity, career-wise, and this
quote alone completely changed his life):

"As a man's real
power grows;and his knowledge widens,
ever the way he can
follow grows narrower:until at last he chooses
nothing,but does only and wholly
what he must do."

*
* * *

One day it hit me that I
wanted to help people become self-reliant and create wealth for themselves and
their families. It wasn't exactly a choice. I had just finished Time Warrior
and was enjoying the response to that book, and the break between books.

A year passed and my
publisher was ready for a sequel. My original idea for the sequel was Catch
Fire, yet another book about motivating yourself. Then I asked a trusted
friend and mentor about what ought to be next. What do people care the most
about? What's even more vital than becoming a warrior around managing one's time?

"Money," my
friend said. "People want to know how to make money. That's even more
important to them."

It hit me like a
thunderbolt and it was beyond choice. It chose me. I whispered to
myself, "wealth warrior."

*
* * *

something for you from
Wealth Warrior:

This kind of "service" does not pass the giggle test

When I say the word "service," what
do you think of?

If you are leaning
toward warrior, then I know you are not thinking of "public service."

Often people think of
politicians who have been in the government for long periods of time—senators, congressmen,
people like that—as being somewhat heroic for spending their lives "in
public service."

We see tributes and very
expensive dinners featuring toasts to these politicians who have "given
their lives over to public service" as if it was a tremendous sacrifice on
their part.

This whole "public
service" idea has inflicted confusion upon the word "service" in
the worst possible way.

Because this senator
(Republican or Democrat, doesn't usually matter) sitting there being toasted
and roasted is someone who has lived a lifestyle of deal-making and good-old-boy
favor-trading while never having to pay for anything. He is being chauffeured
and flown around the world like the king of Brunai on government money.

Not his money.

He has a huge staff
running around doing work for him so even if he has to sit in a committee
hearing, you can see the staff around him buzzing like bees—a staff of people
who have done all the real preparation for that meeting.

So, where's the
"service" they are all talking about?

Not only does this
"public servant" live off other people's money and do no work of his
own, this same public beneficiary gets rich, and receives huge speaking fees.
When he comes into office, his net worth is x and when he leaves office it's 100
times x—how did that occur?

Service!

Really?

No. Some company he did
a political (financial) favor for is now going to have him come speak for
$50,000 at their big dinner.

When presidents come
into office without a lot of money and leave multi-millionaires, even though
their presidential salary was not all that big, we have to wonder about the
term "public service."

It's a mockery.

It's hilariously
mislabeled.

It hardly represents a
service to the public.

This is one of the
reasons it's sometimes hard with clients of mine to have them understand that
the source of all wealth is service.

Because they hear terms
like "public service" and "a life of service" about these
people that they know are not serving.

They know that these
people are actually being waited on hand and foot.

While performing
"public service" from the back of a limo.

It's a tremendous
disservice to so tarnish this glorious word.

Part of seeing the
source of wealth for you and for me is to clean that word up and give it a
fresh new understanding so that it really means something. It really means
helping someone else, assisting another person, and delivering actual value.

Politicians are not
public servants. We just all call them that because we've fallen asleep.

It's like the hotel
operator said to me this morning. This is your wake up call.

September 04, 2012

On October 6 thru 8 there will be a great LIVE event in Los
Angeles that Michael Neill (pictured above) and I are going to be speaking at
(along with two great speakers, Mandy Evans and Rich Litvin).... and it will be
rewarding to attend.

I dedicated my book Wealth Warrior to Michael Neill, and
one of the early pages reproduces a Facebook post he made awhile back that I
saved:

From Michael Neill:

Question of the Day, with thanks to Clarence Thomson:

What's missing from your life and how do you keep it out?

* * *

I'll say it a little louder: WHAT'S MISSING FROM YOUR LIFE AND HOW DO
YOU KEEP IT OUT?

I love to take these questions personally. Instead of pretending
that this is something I already know all about and I'm going to teach YOU
about.

Not credible. As a place to come from.

For most of my life I would ask this question a little differently:
What's missing from my life and who are the people responsible for keeping it
out? My parents who didn't teach me how to be a billionaire. My partners who weren't
appreciative. My government. My planet. My religion. That was me. That was me
in the corner, losing my religion and everything else. Including most of my marbles.

Because that's what the mind of an entitled victim does. It
becomes so open-minded, all the marbles are lost and only the insanity of
disappointment remains.

Michael Neill (www.supercoach.com) is great at changing all that
for people. Here he is in a youtube video clip about the big live event October
6-8:

My Personal Internal Commitment is my new book's
name WEALTH WARRIOR. I am the Napoleon Hill of the modern age. I create
wealth for other people with my coaching, training, audios and books. I am
a soldier of fortune, and a warrior of wealth. A spiritual mercenary. I
transform sales teams, fundraisers, small businesses and individuals in
personal coaching and consulting practices by teaching them 100 Ways to
Create Wealth (my previous book on this subject). I regularly draw strength
from Deuce Lutui and our mutual coach Steve Hardison and share that strength
with my clients and the world. WEALTH WARRIOR is now available and it IS the bestselling of all my books and it FLIPS the entitled mindset
of the financial victim to the mindset of an OWNER OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT.

August 22, 2012

Also, some of you wanted me to repeat this quote
from the great spiritual philosopher Thomas Merton, and
thanks for asking me to repeat it because I enjoy repeating it to
myself especially when I catch myself living out of lazy habits:

"The biggest human
temptation

is to settle for too
little."

~ Thomas Merton

* * * * * *

“Wealth results
from creativity and service. Only always. This gold nugget encapsulates the
essence of Wealth Warrior. Steve Chandler has written dozens of life changing
books and Wealth Warrior is his best yet. It is as if his entire writing and
coaching career is converging in this book. In the midst of all of the
political handwringing about creating jobs, Steve Chandler gets to the heart of
where and how wealth and prosperity is really created – in the mind. If you
want to keep waiting for someone else to rescue you, skip this book. But if you
are ready to take charge of your own wealth creation, get this book now.”

August 10, 2012

Many coaching clients that I work with think there are things in the way of their success. Inner character flaws, outer circumstances. Two strikes against them!

So they don't take action or experiment with life.

There's a lot of fear, there's a lot of placidity, there's a lot of regret. There's a lot of disappointment in life.

There's a really big sense that "My life isn't working for me."

Now notice that you've probably never heard a child say to you: "My life isn't working for me."

I mean that would be in a funny Peanuts cartoon or something like that; but a real child is testing, trying, failing, exuberantly living life (it's a form of testing everything).

"How do I get that back?" my client asked me last week.

"You don't GET it back like you get a gift on your birthday. YOU TAKE IT BACK!"

* * *

FROM THE BACK COVER:

In his liveliest and most entertaining book to date, Steve Chandler boldly takes on the entitled victim mindset with a series of warrior principles and stories to fire up even the most cynical soul.

With heartbreaking biographical honesty, Chandler tells his own story of underachievement, alcoholism, bankruptcy and shame. Then, in the encouraging spirit of "If I can do this anybody can," he gives us all the turnaround inspirations that converted him from wealth worrier to wealth warrior.

"I just joined the Wealth Warrior Movement and I am amazed at the depth of the content Steve is providing. I have been listening to the new wealth warrior audios over and over and finding new, powerful distinctions every time I listen. I can't wait for the wealth webinars to begin! I am finally ready to create my own wealth breakthroughs!"

May 14, 2012

I honestly believe it's one person at a time. I know that may sound naive as vast nations keep moving vast sums of borrowed money around trying frantically to keep their treasuries afloat.

How could one person counter this?

But recently a client of mine told me about one person. One person donated a gift to his small college in the midwest. And it was an anonymous cash gift of $100,000,000. Yes you read that right, one hundred million dollars.

Steve Jobs was one person, and look at all the wealth (and jobs) he created. True, too, with Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. He was one person, one nerdy college student in a dorm creating a network for the school to connect with online.

Creating.

A woman I know is a wonderful actress and could have remained simply an actress forever but instead divined a mission to teach women to become amazing trim and fit through pole dancing and music....Sheila Kelley... now a movement... called SFactor... check her out.... here: www.sfactor.com/

Although SFactor now employs hundreds and serves thousands, Sheila Kelley started it from zero. Nothing. And now all this.

Sheila, too, is one person.

I myself pay various coaches, designers, event planners, airlines, bookkeepers, accounting people, etc.... I pay them money and add to their own prosperity. I am able to do this because my books and my seminars sell. In fact, my books sell in China. China pays me for that... China pays one person.

Our government borrows money from China just to make the interest payments on its own out of control debt. But I don't borrow from China; the money China sends me is for work I have done.

I don't owe China anything. I am one person.

You are one person.

I believe that one person at a time we can create worldwide prosperity.

July 28, 2010

In a book I wrote called The Ten Commitments I focused on the great visionary architect and scientist Buckminster Fuller. He defined synergy as "the behavior of whole systems, unpredicted by knowledge of the component parts."

Fuller uses the example of two metals combining to be stronger than the sum total of each metal. Why are they stronger? Because of the interaction of their molecules when they are put together.

Buckminster Fuller proved in his work that most people do not know it is possible to get more out of a system than you put into it. To get more than you pay for.

At first, when I was reading about Fuller's life I thought, "But that's architecture and design theory….does it really apply to a human life? Surely the same laws don't apply. This is flesh and blood and emotions, not metal."

But, that's the secret beauty of Buckminster Fuller's life. He applied these principles to his own life, too. And what a gift to us that he did. Because Fuller's life was not easy. Not until he applied the synergy.

In 1922, Buckminster Fuller's first child died in his arms of pneumonia just a month before her fourth birthday, after having survived both infantile paralysis and spinal meningitis. Fuller felt he was personally to blame for her death, which he thought could have been prevented if he had provided adequate housing and a properly designed environment. Imagine the pain of thinking that.

Then, in 1927, he lost a building company, which he had founded with his father-in-law, to bankruptcy. Couple that with personal bankruptcy the same year, and then add the birth of a new daughter. The pressure was unbearable. He stood on the edge of Lake Michigan and contemplated suicide.

The birth of his new daughter had pushed him to the edge of the water. He had to make a decision. It had to either be suicide or complete personal reinvention. There was no middle ground for him. His old chaotic way of life would only endanger his new child.

"I had really been through a great deal," said Fuller. "But I had gone into Harvard with high honors in physics. I had very rich boyhood experience with boats. In the Navy, I had looked into electronics, the chemistries and navigation. I had papers to command unlimited tonnage on the ocean. I could fly. But I had kept pushing things, trying them out. And it always seemed to come to a dead end. I decided I'd better call myself to account, with this new child to care for. Or get myself out of the way, because I was a mess."

"At the age of 32 I decided to reorganize my effectiveness to recapture the capabilities we were born with," he said. "This is really where I started. I was not called an architect. I was not called anything. I was simply faced with the problem of organizing myself and really starting to use me. I had to educate myself in a great many ways to pursue such a course. But I found it's actually possible for an individual to make first moves, and that these will incite various others."

Fuller's enormous success thereafter was based on his many "first moves." He found that when he created a plan, and then made a series of first moves, he was creating and producing his life with action. Most people wait for the first moves to happen to them. They let the world around them make the first moves and then they respond, living a life of second moves, all in response to others. They never realize the mind shift that is available to them.

Fuller also saw that the breakthrough would be to make a commitment to "reorganize" himself, all those individual parts of himself that had not yet been working in synergy, but rather pulling in all different directions. It took working in synergy, with all of his commitments firing at once, to recapture the capabilities he was born with.

Fuller wasn't the first person to become enlightened to the possibility of one's work, when done right, being a perfect model for a whole life done right. Ludwig van Beethoven once said, "He who understands my music will not be tormented by the ordinary difficulties of life."

When chaos escapes into a higher order there is synergy. This not only happens in science and physics, it happens in our own chaotic lives. It can happen in our own minds when we shift from passivity to a first move. That shift is everything.

* * * * * * *

Alastair Campbell has written a book called THE MARKETING LAUNCHPAD (www.idealmarketingcompany.com) to guide people through the process of marketing their business.

Most people I coach in small businesses believe they don't know "how to" do certain important things like marketing and selling. But the "how to" is never what's missing. What's really missing is the "want to".....the deep, single-minded desire to be a dramatic success.

Once you get that "want to" in place, and it's in you, a place you can now "come from" then the "how to" begins to show up everywhere...like this book by Alastair.

For a small business, the right marketing can launch you. But it has to be right. It has to connect with your prospective customers and clients, and connect in ways that actually begin the sales process.

Becoming passionate and knowledgeable about strong and effective marketing is the first (and most necessary) step to business success. We live in a weakened age....people are looking for handouts, bail-outs, government assistance, and all kinds of "help." However, true and rapid success comes froma mindset of self help, a mindset of self-reliance and and a mindset of business power.

Successful businesses are created.

They don't just "happen" to people who catch a lucky break with a hot product or service. Your marketing is the most important part of that creation because it is the part that reaches out to your customer, takes him by the hand, and walks him through your doors.

Make it something you know and care about. Start with this book.

* * * * * * *

It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle. There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”

~P.J. O'Rourke

* * * * * *

"Chandler's ten-part success course,Mindshift, is a habit-breaking, overhauling, corner-turning, life-changing gift to yourself, your better self. It is based on a simple premise: when your mind is open it will shift, from problems to opportunities, from How do I get there? to When do I start? In the company of this wise, witty, remarkable man, you will nod your way up the ladder of consciousness, stepping over fear and worry all the way up to the creative force of the god within. Your old story, the person that's too tired, too old, too busy, too poor, too burdened with circumstances, will be left behind on the couch watching heroes on TV, as you head up and out to commit mind, body and spirit to your true calling."

April 14, 2010

"What gets me upset with the newer players is their lack of intensity. They tend to go through the motions a little bit. They don't understand that you've got to practice the way you play."

~Al Kaline

************************************

The year was 1955 and it was springtime in Birmingham, Michigan, a great time and place to be alive if you were 11 years old as we were.

Each morning I read my favorite sportswriter Joe Falls as he reported on developments for the Tigers' spring training in Florida. I was wistful, dreamy and lazy.

That would soon change.

Because that was the year I met another 11-year-old who would become my lifelong friend and who would immediately change my life for the better. He was tall and wiry and he had red hair and freckles and looked like he walked right out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

This person would later become the author, playwright, advertising creative director, world traveler, horse racing aficionado, country folk singer Terrence N. Hill, but back then he was just Terry.

Before I met him I had been a young baseball fan in a rather relaxed, distant way. I read the sports pages and listened to games on the radio. In my cocoon of passivity. But Terry is not a passive person. Neither does he enjoy passivity in others. (Try vacationing with him. You'll need to take a vacation after the vacation to recover.)

Terry engages life full-out. So it wasn't long before he had me following baseball at deeper levels than most boys ever do. And he also convinced me to try out for Little League and play the game, too.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A true friend is someone who will make us do what we can."

That was Terry.

About a year after befriending him I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom with baseball cards neatly aligned next to a stenographer's notebook as I rolled dice to see what the next player would do at bat. I'd then record the result on the pad, and after awhile there were huge stacks of pads piled high with statistics. Terry and I had invented a game, a precursor to today's fantasy leagues, we simply called "Leagues."

Like baseball-addicted mad scientists we'd play, sometimes ten hours straight, long into the night, and then rush to each other's houses the next day to report the results. We owned and memorized every baseball card of every player in major league baseball and our knowledge of the sport's trivia would make Bill James (later to become baseball's greatest statistician) look woefully uninformed.

To speed up our calculating of batting averages we taught ourselves to use an abacus. We later replaced that with a slide rule, marvelous for quickly calculating averages and ERAs.

And out in the yard we also played. Hours on end! We cut golf balls open to get at the hard, bouncy little ball in the middle and then used that ball to throw off various walls and garage doors. We also played catch, and fungo, and soon were playing on the same team, the Wildcats, in Little League. Terry was our shortstop and I played third base. We were champions. Terry was the sparkplug.

We were so into baseball that the real world had become a mere alternative universe. We did follow real sports, but they were never quite as exciting as the leagues we ourselves created and wrote about.

Back then, living outside Detroit, it was safe for two boys to take a bus to Briggs Stadium downtown to watch our Tiger heroes, Ray Boone (who led the league in runs batted in in 1955), Al Kaline who was the league's best hitter (.340) and Harvey Kuenn who captained the team and led the league in doubles. Our Tigers scored more runs than any team in the American League although the Yankees, (with Mickey Mantle and his unbeatable rat pack), ran away with the pennant.

That was a long time ago, though, no? And, so, here we are 54 years later. What's changed? Almost nothing! So we wrote this book about baseball.

This was a year Dickens would have liked because Terry and I followed the best of teams and the worst of teams. Terry, who has long been a New Yorker, got to follow his Yankees all the way to the World Championship. (Sorry for spoiling the ending.)

I, myself, followed my own hometown Arizona Diamondbacks.

Dysfunction in uniform.

As a part of this book's research we decided to spend a week together in New York, going to games and visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Terry also spent a weekend in Phoenix to see my team play. The wonderful thing about that was that we had as much fun this time around as we used to have when we both lived on Buckingham Road in 1955, just a few houses apart from each other.

There is no real rhyme or reason to this book. No attempt to chronicle a season comprehensively. It's really about two fans having fun following baseball and writing to each other about it.

Terry did a better job telling the story of the Yankees season, and I'm glad he did, because everybody loves a winner. (Damn Yankees!) I, on the other hand, felt I had an obligation to the readers not to make them depressed ... so I tried to write as little about the Diamondbacks as I could.

This is our fourth book together. We started on a whim. We were initially trying to get into the Guinness World Records book as the first people to ever read Moby Dick all the way through. We decided to make our correspondence about that reading experience into a book, and to our surprise a lot of people really enjoyed it, and are still buying copies today.

So we fantasized that we were now pressured to write more books together. Terry had been mailing me his favorite obituaries for decades so we hit upon Two Guys Read the Obituaries as a fun sequel. To our fresh surprise, people bought that one, too. Not in Harry Potter numbers, but enough books were sold to forge ahead with our third book, Two Guys Read Jane Austen.

That one sold more copies than the first two combined! Other authors were now becoming envious. It is said that at one publishing convention a long line of writers paraded outside the convention hall carrying signs that said: "Break up the Two Guys!"

But we would not stop writing.

So then we became lit up by the work of Jane Austen, and the challenge of writing about her. One of Jane's books that we wrote about was Mansfield Park, the dust jacket of which describes Jane's mission as an author. It says it was her mission to "...express her faith in a social order that combats chaos through civil grace, decency and wit."

That's baseball's mission, too. In these chaotic times, there is always baseball. It is just a game. But it can restore us to sanity.

We talk in this book a lot about the great baseball player Ichiro. Yes he goes by one name and this book explains why. Although there's another explanation, too. He is as masterful at his art as other one-name people like Picasso or Sting or Elvis are at theirs.

So I'm going to finish this by telling you something Ichiro said once. And I hope I can get this in because sometimes Terry likes to edit my writing out when I go too far in the direction of my passion for personal growth and the psychology of achievement.

Once, upon first facing Red Sox pitcher and countryman Daisuke Matsuzaka, Ichiro said, "I hope he arouses the fire that's dormant in the innermost recesses of my soul. I plan to face him with the zeal of a challenger."

Boy do I ever love that quote. The fire in my soul. The zeal of a challenger. I love his quote almost as much as I love baseball itself. And I have Terry to thank for that.

So onward into this season. I hope you feel our love of baseball in TWO GUYS READ THE BOX SCORES.

***************************

If you are a coach and/or speaker, and we have a lot of readers here who are, and you would like to talk to me about being my apprentice for a year, please email me. I have an opening in May that goes from May 15, 2010 to May 15, 2011.

If you would like to learn my trade, work behind the scenes with me, take possession of all my material to present as you will, be taught and coached by me for a full year, learn how to build a very lucrative coaching practice, then email me, hit reply, and tell me about you. Also tell me your level of commitment to success as a coach.

This apprenticeship requires a significant financial commitment from you, so please do not consider this position unless you are willing to make that commitment fearlessly, and take responsibility for having the investment pay.

You will also pay for travel and any expenses you incur coming to my events. You can choose as many or as few of my training events to attend as you like. You will receive free full attendance at the Financially Fearless Money Mastermind I'm doing with Michael Neill ($10,000) and full participation in the coaching school I am putting on that begins in August ($9,000) and any other events and/or groups (some in the planning stage) all covered by your apprenticeship fee.

You'll receive weekly 30 minute coaching sessions throughout the year by phone, and a minimum of 20 hours of one-on-one in-person sessions with me.

You'll learn all my training programs and receive all the background materials from my past 20 years of successful coaching and business and leadership training.

This position always fills quickly. I never carry more than two apprentices at a given time, and if your apprenticeship overlaps with another coach's you will enjoy learning from that coach as well.

Because this program requires that I give so much of my time and my work to you, I always make certain I choose my apprentice very carefully so that it is someone I know I will enjoy working with and someone I know will use this apprenticeship to succeed way beyond past benchmarks. If you and I talk and if either one of us can't picture how real success would happen, we will not be working together. My commitment is very large to you.

February 02, 2010

My new book is now available for the first time on Amazon and in book stores, and this is a book that Club Fearless members already have received a copy of because it is the sequel to FEARLESS.

Once you can grasp being fearless, you can start shifting your mind and the new book has over 100 mindshifts you can make.

I know what you're thinking. You'd rather just win the lottery. Right? Well, no, hold on. That's the whole reason our country is in debt. And that's the thoroughly corrupted thought inside the head of our favor-buying, morally bankrupt politicians.

Winning the lottery would do you more harm than good.

(I know, you are saying, "Let me be the judge of that! I want to find out for myself!")

However, I think it's important to see this.

A recent news story about a person named Abraham Shakespeare is instructive. Winning $30 million in the Florida Lottery should have been the best thing that ever happened to him. Would you agree? (Actually, I hope not.)

Because with Abraham's newfound wealth came a string of bad choices and hangers-on who constantly hit him up for money. Nine months ago, he vanished. Friends and family hoped he was on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean.

On Friday, detectives confirmed that a body buried under a concrete slab in a rural backyard was his.

****************

When you really study The Seventeen Lies we tell ourselves to maintain our stories in life, you see that Lie Number Eleven may be the most fascinating of all the lies:

Winning the lottery would solve everything

*****************

The whole concept of the lottery is based on what Gandhi insisted was one of life's true evils: unearned money. The concept that ruins more businesses and individuals than any other: something for nothing. A bubble-leveraged greed grab for instant financial payoff.

When people begin to tell themselves that money itself is what's missing in their lives, the lying has begun. Because money is not what's missing. What's missing is the ability to make it and save it. The personal effectiveness is what is missing. The inner strength.

Action builds that strength, and we lie to ourselves to stay out of action.

In his book about lottery winners in the state of Michigan, Money For Nothing, Jerry Dennis documents many sad stories of people who won millions only to have their lives become much more difficult. One couple won a fortune, only to face tax complications that prompted them to quit their jobs and invest in a small resort. The main resort house began falling apart as soon as they moved in, and the whole thing turned into a nightmarish money pit. The people started treating them differently. Even the grocer who used to smile and give them a nice deal on vegetables or throw in an extra orange, never did that any more. People regarded them coldly.

Lottery winners often have to move to another state and start over. Go somewhere where people don't know how they got their money. Because people treat lottery winners much differently than they treat people who have earned their wealth. Distant relatives call and ask for financial help.

"Come on! It's for my daughter's medical bills. It's not as if you earned that money. You ought to be willing to share some of it! I can't believe the selfishness and greed you're showing. After all, it's just by pure chance that you have that money. I could have won as easily as you. It's pure luck. You didn't do anything at all to deserve what you got. And now you won't even share a small percentage of it! I know people who work hard for their money who are more generous than you. Boy, that lottery really brought out the worst in you. At least we know who you really are now. At least the rest of the family knows your true selfish uncaring unsharing character."

A wealthy person who has earned the money is usually treated with respect. I was watching TV and I saw a show on which Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, both multi-billionaires, went to the University of Washington to share the stage and speak to students about their businesses and life experiences. When the two men arrived in the auditorium, they were greeted with a standing ovation.

People who become millionaires in the lottery are often treated with jealousy and a kind of contempt. (The universe has a great deal of fun unmasking these lies that we tell, like the lie about the money solving everything.) Most people who win money quit their jobs and try to spend their way to happiness and fulfillment only to find themselves growing less and less happy. Many realize that they were not even being truthful with themselves every morning when they said, "I hate this job."

Joe Mullich, writing in Business First, recounts the horrible misadventures of lottery winner Buddy Post who won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania State Lottery.

When Buddy Post won his sixteen million dollars he was a cook and a carnival worker, working for every cent he had, and treating his money as if he had earned it (which he had.)

After winning the lottery, Post began a life of pure trouble. He started up a bar and a used-car lot with his siblings, but those businesses went under. Post's landlord then claimed that Post owed her half the lottery money, and Post was restricted from taking any more of his winnings. Eventually she got a third of it. Around the same time Post's brother, Jeffrey, was plotting to kill Post and his wife. He was trying to get the rest of the lottery money for himself. The brother was eventually convicted of his murder plot in 1993. Post then declared bankruptcy with debts of $500,000, not counting money owed for taxes and to lawyers.

Mullich concludes his story about Buddy Post, "Today? Post lives in a mansion, but the gas was shut off when he couldn't pay the bill. Post now says he feels lucky his phone and electricity weren't shut off too. Post has been trying to auction off his future lottery payments but the Pennsylvania Lottery is trying to block the auction. Post says he will devote the remainder of his days to filing lawsuits against lawyers and others who have conspired to take his money."

The reason lottery winners are blindsided by the unexpected horrors of winning is that they have tried to equate their discipline problems with money problems. They tell themselves money is the answer, when it's not. The answer was action. How to develop a reliable course of action that would provide more than enough money. The lie is used to avoid this action.

In Money For Nothing, Jerry Dennis concludes that "many lottery winners have been disappointed to find that, instead of a free ride on a gravy train, they've only been given a new pair of shoes for the same old dusty road, or, as one winner put it, 'the same problems, just with bigger numbers.' "

In a shocking study done by Dan Coates, Ronnie Janoff-Bulman and Philip Brickman the well-being of lottery winners was compared to those who had suffered accidents resulting in quadriplegia (loss of the use of arms and legs) and paraplegia (loss of legs). They wanted to find out whether people who won the lottery would have huge increases in happiness, and whether people who suffered such devastating physical traumas would have huge decreases in happiness.

Neither thing happened! The increases didn't occur, and the decreases didn't occur. People kept their happiness quotients, on the average, at the same level no matter whether they lost their legs or won eight million dollars. The two groups reported nearly identical levels of happiness.

So, people could win the lottery. Or they could lose their legs. The two events would have the same effect on their happiness in life. I think that proves that happiness is a separate thing. It's totally separate from outside events, good or bad. It's an internal adventure, and it's based on our ability to grow a sense of purpose that we can fulfill every day. Every day.

To continue to tell myself that I'd be happy if I won the lottery is to continue to lie to myself about where happiness comes from.

Meanwhile, friends and family puzzled Friday over Abraham Shakespeare’s rapid rise and fall. They said their friend lived a humble life, and just before he bought the winning ticket, he joined a church and was baptized.

At that moment, he was perfect just the way he was.

Then he won the lottery.

The same one we all want to win.

His unearned riches drew all the wrong people into his life with all the wrong motives. He started telling people he wished he had never won. Soon after that he wished he had never been born.